R.I.P. Hardware?
I think I mentioned elsewhere that since discovering (first) Propellerheads Reason and then Ableton Live a few years ago, I have hardly turned on any of my synths. It just is that for the way I work (and frankly, the way my life has been) the quickest way for me to make tunes is in software. But I still have most of those old beasts and can't bear to get rid of them...so maybe writing about them here will honor them in some weird way.
Roland Sound Canvases
The first synth I ever had was a Roland SC-55. For several years I did all my music using an E-mu "Proformance+" for its piano voices, and the SC-55 for everything else. Many were the fond hours were spent listening to those little boxes...
When I worked at the computer retail store in 1995, I discovered to my amazement a Roland SC-88 on the floor! I don't know how that ended up at my store but I really coveted it. When I knew I was going to leave the store, I used my employee discount to buy it....at the time it came to something like $650, money I scarcely had...but I HAD to have that box!
Later on, when I had a decent income again, I bought an SC-880 from
When I worked at the computer retail store in 1995, I discovered to my amazement a Roland SC-88 on the floor! I don't know how that ended up at my store but I really coveted it. When I knew I was going to leave the store, I used my employee discount to buy it....at the time it came to something like $650, money I scarcely had...but I HAD to have that box!
Later on, when I had a decent income again, I bought an SC-880 from
(continued)
someone on ebay...I still have that to this day (2008) It's completely compatible with Sound Canvases all the way back to my little SC-55...in my opinion it sounds excellent.
someone on ebay...I still have that to this day (2008) It's completely compatible with Sound Canvases all the way back to my little SC-55...in my opinion it sounds excellent.
Roland JV-880
I still (2008) have two of these old machines and if somewhat beasts in their programming but they are rock solid in terms of reliability and they have a huge sound.
The Emu Morpheus
This was more interesting on paper than I managed to get any great sounds out of. The idea was that it had hypercomplex filters you could apply a big collection of basic waves that would change in several parameters at once over the sounding of the note(s). The biggest limitation I ran into was that I could never figure out a way to sync its LFOs to MIDI tempo. In any case I still have the beast.
The Mighty SC-88
